Mechanical Ennui
by Lawrence Fitzroy
Summary: The language of life in Forks is a drab, faded blur of awful weather.
1. Exposition

Wind strips her face, snatching and flinging her hair, setting it dancing around her ears. Highway snakes out lithely in front of her car bonnet. Her shades slip slowly and inevitably back on her head, increasing pressure on the bones behind her ears, and lend a curious sense of gathering, of fruition, of anticipation to the gusting of hair and rush of car. She snatches the shades off, chucking them on the empty seat to her right, keeping her eyes dead ahead. She barely hears the clatter as they fall between the seat and the door over the sound of the radio humming in and out of static. Dashed road markings flicker past in a sepia-tinged morse code. The horizontal light necessitates a perpetual squint against the glory of onrushing twilight. The air has the cool edge that anticipates the vast grandeur of night. Rolled down windows give no protection against time and the elements, and the thought makes her shiver. Rolled down windows, and the road rolling under her. The car is a still point in a turning universe, and her lips quirk up, smirking at such egocentric insolence. The exit nears, and she brakes tentatively. The weight of the fine evening is fading, air clammy, but it deserves her momentary reverence as a meteorological rarity, she thinks, in this fine town of Forks. Bella turns off the highway, slowing now, and rolls up her windows. Wouldn't do to be caught speeding, not when your dad's the local cop.

After the monotony of concentration, pulling into home's driveway jerks her mind into the present, away from dusty postcard sunsets and bald spinning tires, grease and engines. Inside, she boils the kettle. Waiting for the keen and whistle, she rummages in the inside pocket of Charlie's nasty fishing coat, emerging triumphant with a packet of cigarettes. She knicks a few and carefully replaces the pack, repositioning the coat into casual nonchalance. The kettle screams, demanding attention, and she gathers cup, teabag, milk one handed, closing cupboards and fridge with her elbows. The wet heat of the steam laps her hand as she pours out the boiling water, and waits patiently for the black to seep out of the teabag, leaching into the transparency. Her eyes glaze slightly as she waits, and the world pauses. She pours in the milk, slowly, slowly, once the tea is as black as sin, and watches the vortices of white force the black to brown. She fishes out the teabag with her fingers, hissing between her teeth at the burn, and chucks it in the bin she levers open with her foot and knee. Cradling cup, with cigarettes twined in her fingers, she slouches upstairs to curl at her window. Cigarettes scatter around her feet, and she sips and stares at nothing.

Her eyes betray nothing, eyelids flickering imperceptibly only when she raises the cup to her lips. But her mind moves through eddies unknown, sinuously synthesising that which her gaze seems to brush over carelessly. She sips on deep structure and forgotten syntax, ignoring the twinge of burning heat at the back of her mouth. Once the tea is gone, she pats around her ankles without looking down, locating a cigarette with wandering fingers. Other hand seeks the lighter pushed out of sight behind a book, and she brings them together in exquisite matrimony. The delicate whisper and hush of first burn holds the moment still, and her first drag is a sigh. She drops her hands and inhales-exhales through the cigarette, breathing nothing but smoke and ash until her eyes water. Cigarette snatched away, and she pants deep sucks of air for a moment, mind swirling around optative moods. Then automatic rise and fall of occasional drag joins her respiration. The first cig disappears quickly, and the next is lit, rises and falls, shortens in relentless creep, and is naught but ashy butt soon after. Out the window, she unsees the sharp treeline in the dusk, silhouetted by washed-out blue that intensifies bit by bit into hard, dark indigo. She smokes until the clouds gather, covering the first scattering of pinpoint stars, and the heavy rain drops fall, splashing like hot blood down her window. When the third cigarette burns out to sweet scar of smouldered filter, she gathers momentum, all of a sudden, unlatches the window and throws the butts she'd gathered in her lap outside. They arch through the air to land somewhere, abandoned in the wet grass. Admiring the scatter of drops on her hand, she extends a leg out the window, some childish glee in the simple sensation of rain, black in the night, splattering onto her shins. Finally closing the window out of concern for the cushions in the rain, once the haze of smoke had dissipated into the drip and wash of the outside world, she sprays an old perfume around her room, hiss-hissing esterified scent over the dirty smoke smell. She wrinkles her nose, and vacates, looping the empty tea cup in her fingers. Tripping light down the stairs, she deposits the mug in the sink and snags an apple from the fruit bowl. She leans back on the counter to crunch through it, quickly entranced again by the downpour visible also through the downstairs window. The rain falls in parallel streaks above the kitchen table, in cinematic frame. Her fingers smell like smoke when she raises the apple to her lips.

She needs to sleep, she thinks. The ache in her bones skitters restlessly. The time was too flat, stretching out around her, hard to pick apart. Maladroit, a shiver of anxiety plucking at her chest, she wonders if she is confusing ennui with exhaustion. Charlie's cruiser finally pulls up, a little past midnight, as she toys with the browning apple core and licks, cat-like, at her vile fingers, and she recognises the plain pause in his eyes and his implausible smile as he walks in the door. The rain had sunk into his soul too. She wishes him goodnight, kissing him on scruffy cheek, and treads upstairs to finally sink into the bed in her awful smelling room. Her dreams are all flat greys, punctuated by brief glimpses of sunrises.

She slips into the next morning's shower as the morning strokes the treeline out her window, spreading bright orange-russets into the saturated landscape. The hot water and soap feel like baptism. She leaves her window open to air out her room and Charlie in the kitchen with a coffee and a promise to pick up some more milk as she drives off to school. The corridors and halls feel like a daze. She twirls her pencil in her hand, and ignore the static of classes. Her page consists of lists – countries and continents (Pangaea, Yugoslavia), words (alderbest, myrmecophile, philoprogenitive, abomasum), biological jargon (meiosis, adanine), Jewish physicists (Feynman, Oppenheimer, Bohm, Einstein, Witten, Zweig), songs (Ramble On, Misty Mountain Hop, She Said She Said), homework assignments (essay, sheet, chapter) – and her mind consists of concentric circles. She talks and smiles on social cues, but the cycle of her blood, oxygenated and gradually deoxygenated, gushing round and around, beats so much stronger and insistently in her mind. Nothing is concrete other than the slip and swill of her body. The thought of the cafeteria is impossible, and she treads out, shrugging into her truck, and drives away.


	2. Development

She heads to the reservation and Jake. He emerges from under the half-pulled up garage door on cue as she pulls close, wiping his hand on a rag, and opens her door to silently proffer cigarettes. She nods, smiling, and he lights one for her, quickly sucking between teeth, and passing the smouldering cig to her with deft, dirty fingers. He lights another, and after their first sips of smoke the rapport for words is built.

'How's it looking?'

'Better,' his voice is quiet, measured, rasping slightly around the smoke, 'less of a skeleton. Been skipping school now I have all the parts.'

'Much longer?'

'Maybe a couple days,' he shrugs. 'Come see?'

She follows him under door, and he traces wiring so she can see the circulation of the bike forming. His low mutter mellows her as she breathes ash next to him. The day builds and flickers outside, but under cover it is cool and quiet.

'Pass the wrench?'

It is a simple covenant of hard work. Her hair goes up, and her hands get greasy. He presses the bike together with confident fingers, piecing together suspension and brakes and battery. She does nothing particularly useful, but she passes tools when he asks and watches, eyes light and careful.

'You're remembering this, aren't you?' Jake can feel the calculation in her gaze.

'Most of it. I can see how most of it works. Wouldn't have been able to figure out the right order though.'

A smile quirks his mouth as he tightens a screw. 'You get used to how it fits together. Though it's different with different bikes.'

'I could probably fix another Harley,' she drawls, dead-pan.

'Wouldn't put it past you.' He grins at her. 'I'll keep an eye out at the scrap-heap. Next project.'

'And you'll be the one passing tools.'

'That I will,' he shakes his head and returns to the bike.

After beer with Billy they drag the siding outside and spray paint it black. The sun emerges from the clouds as they wait for it to dry, sitting cross-legged on the driveway, and Bella lies back on the tarmac in the watery light. Jake looks over, appraising the shadows of her eyelashes on her cheeks and the folds of her dirty sweatshirt. Her knees are loose and her feet fall outwards – the whole of her is curved and drooped. He reaches over and rubs a greasy thumb in a circle on the top of her sternum, between her collar bones and above the neck of her shirt, leaving a smear of black. She just waits, eyes still half-closed.

'You're rarely like this, I think,' he begins.

'How so?' she mumbles.

'Relaxed. You know, completely open.' He pauses and runs a finger down the curve of her leg, below and inside her knee, as if her still slump is testament to his words. 'Almost jubilant.'

'I'm content here. It's right and you're – you're quiet, and good, and see deep into things. I feel – sort of sick everywhere else.' She opens her eyes, and squints against the sun. 'I think I'm descending into some parody of normality without here and you.'

'I'm not sure you could manage that if you tried.' She snickers darkly at that.

'It's the way the bike fits together – all true and neat because you understand it and treat it carefully. You don't assume parts work. You behave like that around people, and I like to see it.'

'And around you?'

'Around me, you're honest.' She slides her head on the tarmac to make eye contact. 'It's like staring into a fire, or something. I can just be there for you.'

He laughs.

'Watching your hands is like wandering around an art gallery or listening to Mahler,' she mutters, and blushes, squinting up again.

He leans over, hair falling in his eyes, and traces the circle high on her chest again.

'I wish you could come here more often. I feel as though everything I do is just a distraction until you arrive.' He shrugs. 'How fucked up is that?'

She sits up, using her ankles to push her hips next to his, and curves her neck against his shoulder, nuzzling her face into his neck. His body blocks out the world, and his skin is hot and dancing alive. He wraps his arms around her, pulling her in tighter, and holds her against him. The rising prickle of confused sorrow gathers in the bridge of her nose, and all the anxiety and horror of day in, day out draws in, enfolding her, smothering her, but Jake's grip burns it away. She relaxes again, breathing quiet sobs into his neck. He strokes her hair with his open palm, and when she quietens, pulls away to kiss her hard on the forehead and then her mouth.

She pulls at his shirt to push in closer, pressing into the kiss, all fire and peace. He tucks his hand behind her knee, twisting her over him until she is in his lap. The weight of her falls on his groin, hard friction and tremor, and her heels against the tarmac keep them upright as their torsos press together. He can feel the soft curve of her breasts against his chest and slight panting of their navels against each other. She rocks on his hips as they bite at their tongues, pulling at lips and nipping at necks. One hand threads up her shirt to palm at her ribs and slide grimy thumb over her nipples, and the other is flat at the small of her back, holding her close and tight. His breath is catching fast and shallow in his chest, and all of his blood is sinking to any point of contact between their bodies. His dick is stiff and singing as she grinds against him at a pace too slow to be anything but exultation in their nearness. His hands and hips move in the same semicircles as her body, and they rock in tandem on the driveway, intertwined and gasping for breath.

She breaks the kiss, slowing her hips erratically to a desperate pause. The still weight of her pressed on him is sin and torture and sweet heaven. 'Oh fuck,' she whispers to his neck. 'Now I'm never going to leave.'

He laughs, and holds her tighter against his stomach, sliding one hand out from under her shirt to push behind him as he bunches his legs to stand up. She is still wrapped around him, and he kisses her again, messily, as he carries her into the garage. The front of his legs hit the fender of his car, and he places her on the bonnet, stepping back to admire the image of Bella, knees wide and hungry, sprawled on the car he built. She snags his belt loop and pulls him back to her, laughing at his blown pupils and panting breaths. He pulls his t-shirt off and wraps his hands around her hips, holding her tight and steady. He revels in the sharp corners of her pelvis under his fingers as she gyrates out of her sweater. They stare, chests rising and falling too fast, at each other, Jake transfixed by the dark line of lace against the curve of her breast, the sharp peak of lustful nipple, and Bella by the lines and angles of him and the soft curl of hair above his sternum. They race for a kiss, her fingers still wound in his jeans and his in her hips, and press their skin together, delighted by the heat of each touch. It becomes unbearable, and he loosens his hands to unbutton her jeans, snag down the zipper and pull them away. She doesn't break the kiss, but slides her ass closer to him, rough jeans grinding between her legs until she snatches at his jeans, shucking them too. He's wearing no boxers, and she smiles wryly into his hot shoulder, unable to stop touching him, kissing him. He unhooks her bra and slides off her knickers, frustrated by any loss of contact, and she hooks her ankles behind his legs, bringing them almost as close as they want to be. A pause. And then a burning push and stretch and slide of friction and skin, and motion begins again, hard and invasive and desperate. He pulls her hips further down the bonnet and she lies back, knees bending and feet flat on the fender. His torso pushes up and down on hers, and his hands stroke and trace her. Her nipples drag lines on chest that make her squirm and rock. His mouth is heavy on hers, and at each thrust a slight moan escapes them. They meet each movement the other makes, insistent. Her fingers pull on his hips, encouraging a pace that leaves them gasping harder and harder. He stutters at the greedy clench of her body on his dick, a wet friction that pushes at him, so tight and strong it is like a fevered embrace. The anticipation of orgasm builds, white hot in his stomach, and his lungs huff wild and desperate. Her mouth is all teeth and warmth and pleasure and faint hint of cigarette smoke at which his lips and tongue sing. She feels full and burning, rocking against the cold metal of the car, delighting in the stretch and impale. Her orgasm is the bursting of feeling into tremors of jubilance, radiating down her spine and up her cunt, and he follows soon after, panting into her neck. They kiss, overjoyed, and lie still, basking in the dying heat of wild fucking, listening to the fast pattering of heartbeats. She chuckles and he feels it against his stomach and around his cock. He shifts, and she hisses slightly. They grin.


End file.
